professional and personal

[paloftoon]

What is your opinion on making friends at work, whether that work is a job where you get paid, or a convention where you work for free?

I had the lead convention person give me 1-1 feedback telling me he felt that I did not separate the two very well which did not surprise me. However, he wasn't offering any possible solutions eiter. I also realize that the group of people I was with already had their own cliques, was very immature, and about 10 years younger than me, and not very open with communication.

He did feel I did a great job in my role as a registration head overall.

I always see people being friends with each other at work and conventions, and I feel that I'm at an unfair advantage being single, on the spectrum, and in some cases being independent if everyone else around you is dependent on their parents. I don't let that hold me back as I try to expand my horizons to many groups and personality types within the interests that I enjoy. Thank goodness I live near a big city.

Any advice or questions may be helpful. Thank you.

 

[Flinty]

I try not to make close friends at work. That is not the purpose of work to me. It's getting the money to the students, for crying out loud.

Of course, that's my day job. My weekend job is where to maximize my friends, if only because they actually provide me with some intellectual stimulation.

 

[Harrison]

My general rule is that I don't make friends, especially at work. However, I seemingly have made a friend at work, he is definitely on the spectrum, and we get on really well. In my current plight of being laid off he has phoned every day to make sure I'm ok. Even offered to meet up on his days off, although I have avoided that so far.

I do need a friend, and he is enough like me that I can handle being around him more than an hour or so

 

[Spiller]

I was advised, years ago, not to make friends at work as they would tend to take advantage and expect services at a discount, or for free. My experience was that, occasionally, some people would be so forceful and persistent that this would inevitably happen to my cost but, at the same time, I did meet a lot of very nice people who might have made good friends, though my general adherence to my rule meant that I'll never know.
My issue here is that my work is pretty much the only place I do meet people, so I'm protecting myself while, at the same time sabotaging my chances at a social life.. and I'm not able to differentiate well enough to work out where I should 'draw the line'

 

[royinpink]

In my current plight of being laid off he has phoned every day to make sure I'm ok. Even offered to meet up on his days off, although I have avoided that so far.

Aw, I had that with a coworker who was also on the spectrum too. We never talked about diagnoses (and I wasn't diagnosed then anyway). We were not friends (VERY different types/interests), but I helped him cope and not get bullied at work, and he called me when he heard my contract wasn't renewed.

 

[Judge]

It would depend on the chemistry of people I'm usually around at work. But yes, in the long term I did make friends with people I worked with, and it paid off both emotionally and pragmatically.

I also developed relationships with two women from work. Great while they lasted, and uncomfortable when they failed and we existed only as coworkers.

But for me developing friends has always depended on exposure. As an adult I seldom ever developed any friendships through casual meetings of much of any kind. That just doesn't happen for me. I have to be around people on a regular basis to bond with them. It's that simple....for for me work is a more likely place to develop friendships or perhaps even relationships.

In corporate office environments I find them often quite predatory, so having "allies" can be advantageous as opposed to projecting the "lone wolf" that I really tend to be.

 

[ASD_Geek]

For some reason I do not make friends at work. There are people that I am speak with on a regular basis and with whom I try to be as cordial as possible, but I would call them more of acquaintances. I don't like talking shop nor office politics. I don't like going to lunch or parties with them. I simply want to be left alone to do my job, then I can leave and pursue my interests.

 

[Aspergirl4hire]

I often make a friend at work. It's that chemistry thing. Sometimes it's because I look like a challenge (aloof, or whatever), and sometimes it's because they don't notice the reserve under the mask, and sometimes it's because they see right through the mask. So I don't think about it until someone is trying to "get through." Then I think about whether this feels like a good thing. If it's founded on reasonable common interests and values, and not too difficult logistically, I do, just to see what happens.

 

[Mattymatt]

I got burned one too many times making friends with coworker s. I just don't do it

 

[Beverly]

My work is not a full time job. I am a freelance artist (write music) so, there, my business contacts do often become friends and, I'm okay with that, some of my closest friends are those I've written for.

When I did have a regular job, I did not make friends at work. Acquaintances whom I would say "hello" to if I met them in town or, talk about the weather with yes but, not friends with whom I would engage in any free time activities with.

 

[Cerulean]

My workplace is like one big group of friends. Some of us (not me) are dating others in the department, we have a few huband-wife pairs and a few parent-child dynamics. Three of my best friends work here, no more than 20 feet from me, and we all met here at work. I feel like part of this is management-driven, we frequently have birthday parties, congratulations, baby showers, organized theme days, etc to keep morale up. They also have an interest in keeping turnover low, because people new to the company require extensive training to be able to be good and useful techs (oh I work in very specialized tech support), so hiring is based less on qualifications (almost nobody is qualified to just come in and start working) and more on how they will fit with our little group.

 

[HappyHermit]

I never saw making friends as an aspect of work. I go to work to work (in order to earn the money I need to live), and the needlessly social aspects of it are incredibly taxing.

It's my impression that it is very much the other way around, that it is NTs who fail to separate the personal from the professional. They constantly let conversations drift into their private lives, they want nonsensical chit-chat as a leadup to the real topic at hand, they're often fans of work-related social functions or at least don't mind them too much, especially the ones during work hours - regardless of whether they're actual friends with anyone from work.

It's certainly not me who overlooks the divide.

However, there are cultural differences that may play a part in people's expectations. And I also don't work in a field I would waste a second of my time on this planet on if it weren't for the sake of a paycheque. But new jobs are hard to come by, and I have certain demographic factors working against me that make it even harder. As a result, though, I have even less in common with my coworkers than I likely would if I were working in my own field or in some capacity I had an actual interest in. That makes it even more unlikely for me to slip from the professional into the personal at work. Many of my coworkers are the aliens among the aliens to me.

With that said, I do have friends from work. Not necessarily the mostest bestest, but still people who know me well and care about me. Those were usually the exceptions in the workplace that I had just enough in common with, or who could manage to leave their own world just enough every once in a while (basically to do that which is expected of me for the benefit of NTs day-in and day-out) that we got along well enough to form a personal connection. However, we only really became friends either after one of us left that workplace or, where I currently work, after many years - not a week, a month or a year into my time there, but much later. In that case, it's their track record that allows me to trust them. And it happened organically, not through forced socialising or obsessive friend seeking or some people's (particularly employers') expectation that your colleagues are your friends and should form your primary social circle.

 

[Kari Suttle]

I don't know about making actual friends at work - i don't trust people enough for that anyways. But 'friends' as in just people to talk to at work would be fine in my book. I tend to feel like an outcast, like i'm invisible and unwanted, if no one so much as says hi to me or tries to make small talk. Currently there's only one or two people at work that fit that bill, both guys around my age who despite my never knowing how to respond talk to me whenever they're near me or at least greet me. But as to making real friends at work - people you text and hang out with outside of work - i would not do that unless its your dream job and you know you're gonna be there for a long time to come.

 

[hiraeth]

I have a generally casual attitude towards making friends at work. I'm not against it, it would be nice to have, but I don't need it in order to feel comfortable in the workplace. As long as the people are comfortable to be around, and I can for the most part be myself, I think that is more than sufficient. There are lots more ways to engage with people than "hanging out on the weekends" or whatever, and having a regular lunch buddy, for example, can still be a really meaningful experience. Maybe you might not call such people "friends", but the labels don't matter at the end of the day.

I don't think I would feel too comfortable if a very strict work-life separation code was imposed on me, or if there was intense pressure to be friends with all my coworkers because everyone else is part of a really close knit group. But if I have to choose, I'd prefer to have the former than the latter.

 

[paloftoon]

Thank you for all your responses. It sounds like it's possible to make friends from work, but more than difficult because of another party's insecurities or unnecessary bias.